When it comes to staying healthy it is well-known that a healthy diet is a major lifestyle component. Most people can remember being told to eat their fruits and veggies ever since childhood, and doctors never cease to prescribe a heaping portion of them with our meals. Unfortunately, scientific advances have begun to find that the produce in our supermarkets is not as nutritionally beneficial as we give it credit for.
That’s not to say that it’s time to kick produce to the curb and start surviving off of protein shakes and vitamins. Rather, wild plants and the plants that our ancestors survived on are significantly more nutrient-rich than what we are accustomed to eating. For example, while spinach is widely considered to be a “superfood,” common wild dandelion greens actually have seven times for phytonutrients than spinach.
Phytonutrients are highly beneficial compounds believed to reduce the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and dementia. Our ancestors did not live nearly as long as we do now despite more nutrient-rich diets, but unlike modern man they very rarely died from degenerative diseases. Anthropologists suggest that they likely died primarily from injury and infections.
It was a slow transition to the foods we eat today, starting with people starting to settle and cultivate their own food. While more bitter foods tend to have the most nutrients, the first farmers steered clear of these in favor of plants higher in sugar, starch, and oil because they were more pleasurable to eat.
With these new insights we can create a truly fulfilling and healthy diet for ourselves. We can take a look outside the supermarket at different varieties of food and go back in time towards foods more similar to what our ancestors ate. Who knew getting the greatest nutritional benefits would mean getting back to basics?
Read the entire article here: Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food
